Hire employees in Turkey using an Employer of Record

Turkey's employment law leans hard in the employee's favor. Get a termination wrong and you could owe up to 23.1 weeks of severance pay, on top of notice pay that can run 6.7 weeks depending on tenure. Get the underlying contract wrong, and the whole arrangement can unravel legally before you've even started.

That's the backdrop for anyone hiring in Turkey without a local entity. You've got three real paths: set up your own legal entity, bring people on as contractors, or use an employer of record (EOR). Each one solves a different problem, and picking the wrong one gets expensive.

Option 1: Set up your own entity

• Cost: Significant upfront legal, registration, and accounting setup, plus ongoing compliance overhead every year after
• Timeline: Several months minimum, between tax registration, social security enrollment, and local payroll setup
• Complexity: Full corporate tax registration (Turkey's rate sits at 30%), mandatory social security filings, and statutory payroll infrastructure from day one
• Makes sense when: You're hiring 20+ people long-term and building a permanent operation in Turkey

Option 2: Hire contractors

• Cost: Nothing upfront, but you give up a lot of control over how the work gets done
• Timeline: Immediate
• Risks: Misclassification exposure if the relationship starts looking like employment, plus back taxes and unpaid social contributions if authorities disagree with your setup
• Makes sense when: You need short-term or specialized freelance work, not an ongoing role
• Note: Hire with Columbus also handles contractor agreements and payments if that's the route you need

Option 3: Use an employer of record (recommended for most)

• Cost: from $179/month per employee (USD)
• Timeline: 2-3 days to hire
• Complexity: None. We handle contracts, payroll, taxes, and compliance
• Makes sense when: You're hiring 1-50 people, testing the Turkish market, or managing teams across several countries at once

Here's the math that usually settles it. Employer social contributions in Turkey average 18.5% of gross pay, and that obligation exists no matter how you hire, entity or EOR. What changes is everything around it: legal setup, local payroll systems, and the months of lead time before you can pay anyone.

Hiring 3 people through an EOR runs about $537/month total. Building the entity infrastructure to do it yourself costs far more upfront and keeps costing you every year in maintenance, long after the EOR fees would've paid for themselves. If you're hiring under 10 people, or hiring across a few countries at once, the entity math almost never works in your favor.

Ready to hire in Turkey without setting up a local entity first? Get started with Hire with Columbus.

What employment types can you use?

You've got three ways to bring someone onboard in Turkey. Here's how the costs and risks compare.

How can you hire in Turkey?

Every hiring plan in Turkey comes down to one of three paths: set up a legal entity, bring people on as contractors, or use an employer of record. Each one has a different cost profile, timeline, and risk level, so the right answer depends on how many people you're hiring and how fast you need them working.

Setting up your own entity

This is the heaviest lift of the three. You're registering a company, opening local bank accounts, setting up payroll infrastructure, and putting HR compliance systems in place before you can legally pay anyone. Ongoing accounting, legal fees, and compliance filings continue for as long as the entity exists.

It makes sense when you know you're committed to Turkey for the long haul and plan to build a team of 20 or more. Anything smaller and the fixed costs of running an entity usually outweigh the benefit.

Hiring contractors

Contractors let you start work immediately, no entity, no waiting. The catch is misclassification risk. If a "contractor" works fixed hours, uses company equipment, and takes direction like an employee, Turkish authorities can reclassify that relationship, and you could be on the hook for back taxes and social contributions.

Contractors also can't be managed the way employees are. You can set deadlines and deliverables, but you can't dictate hours or embed them in your team structure without risking that reclassification. Hire with Columbus handles compliant contractor agreements and payment processing if this is the route you need for short-term or specialized work.

Using an employer of record

With an EOR, Hire with Columbus becomes the legal employer in Turkey. We handle the employment contract, payroll, tax filings, social security contributions, and benefits administration. You keep full control over the person's day-to-day work, projects, and performance.

Cost starts from $179/month per employee. Five hires runs from $895/month, no incorporation paperwork, no local accounting firm, no waiting months to get someone on payroll. You can be paying someone legally in Turkey within 2-3 days of signing.

This is the default choice for companies testing the Turkish market, building a small team, or hiring across multiple countries without standing up an entity in each one.

Employment contract types in Turkey

Once you've picked your hiring approach, you still need to choose the right contract type. Turkish labor law recognizes a few distinct categories, and picking the wrong one creates compliance headaches down the line.

Permanent contracts are the standard for full-time employees doing ongoing work. If the role isn't tied to a specific project or a defined end date, this is the contract you want. Most companies hiring core team members in Turkey default to this structure.

Fixed-term contracts only work when there's a genuine, objective reason behind the time limit, things like a specific project, seasonal demand, or covering someone on leave. Turkish law doesn't let employers use fixed-term contracts just to avoid the obligations that come with permanent employment. If you keep renewing a fixed-term contract without a valid underlying reason, it can convert to a permanent one automatically, along with all the rights that come with it.

Part-time employees get proportional versions of the same rights as full-time staff, calculated based on their hours relative to a full-time schedule. You can't structure a role as part-time just to avoid statutory obligations; the entitlements scale, they don't disappear.

Hire with Columbus drafts the right contract type for the role from day one, whether that's a permanent contract for your new country manager or a properly justified fixed-term agreement for a six-month project lead. We make sure the paperwork matches Turkish requirements so you're not exposed if the relationship gets scrutinized later.

How does payroll and taxation work?

That TRY 40,000-a-month employee actually costs you about TRY 47,400 once employer contributions come in. Let's break down where that extra money goes.

Income tax isn't flat

Turkey uses a progressive tax scale, and the average effective rate across the workforce sits around 14.3%. Higher earners can hit a top statutory rate of 40%.

We don't have the full bracket table here, so treat 14.3% as a workforce average, not a prediction for your specific hire. Someone near minimum wage pays well below that average. Someone earning several times minimum wage lands much closer to 40%.

Minimum wage vs. average wage

Turkey's minimum wage is TRY 33,030 per month, effective July 2026. The average monthly wage runs about TRY 39,487.

That gap matters when you're setting a salary. Pay a skilled hire exactly minimum wage and you'll likely lose them to a competitor offering something closer to average.

Social security contributions

Turkey combines social security into one contribution split between employer and employee, not a bunch of separately named schemes.

Watch for the ceiling on the employer side. Contributions toward unemployment, health, and old-age coverage each cap out once monthly earnings hit TRY 297,270.

Above that threshold, employer contributions stop climbing at the same pace. That means very high earners end up costing you proportionally less than the 18.5% headline rate suggests.

Payment schedule

Turkey doesn't require a 13th or 14th month salary. If a candidate expects one, that's a company perk they've had elsewhere, not a legal obligation, so don't build it into your budget by default.

What a real employee actually costs

Here's what three salary levels look like once you add the 18.5% employer contribution, with no bonus obligations factored in:

Your employee's take-home pay also shrinks from their own 15% contribution plus income tax. If you only budget gross salary, you're missing half the picture.

Common payroll mistakes

• Quoting only base salary in an offer. Add that 18.5% employer contribution before you commit to a number, or you'll blow your budget by month one.
• Assuming a 13th month bonus is required. It's not. Only build it into your costs if you're offering it as a perk.
• Treating 14.3% as everyone's tax rate. It's just a workforce average. A well-paid hire could land much closer to the 40% top rate.
• Ignoring the contribution ceiling. For senior roles near or above TRY 297,270/month, your employer cost as a percentage of salary actually drops. Miss this and your cost projections will be off.
• Running payroll without local expertise. Filing errors and late payments create compliance headaches that cost more to fix later than to avoid now.

Doing it yourself vs. letting someone else handle it

Running Turkish payroll on your own means hiring a local accounting firm, buying payroll software, and keeping someone in-house who tracks contribution rules, ceilings, and filing deadlines. That's real time and real risk, before you've even paid your first employee.

With Hire with Columbus, we handle all of it: contributions, filings, payslips, the ceiling math, everything. Pricing starts at $179/month per employee (USD), fully compliant, so you never have to look up a Turkish social security threshold again.

What benefits and leave are required?

Maternity leave in Turkey runs 16 weeks, split before and after birth, and it's paid through social insurance. Fathers get 1 week, also paid. Beyond salary, you're adding roughly 18.5% in employer social contributions on top of every paycheck, plus 14 public holidays a year where work generally stops.

Annual vacation

Turkish law sets minimum paid annual leave based on tenure, and it increases the longer someone stays with you. The exact number of days isn't in a single flat figure, it's tied to years of service under the Labour Law, so check the employee's start date before assuming a number.

A few rules apply regardless of tenure:

• Leave accrues from the first year of employment and can't be used before then.
• Employers set the leave schedule but need to consider the employee's request.
• Unused leave generally has to be paid out at termination, not forfeited.

Don't assume "use it or lose it" applies here the way it might elsewhere. Turkey treats accrued vacation as money owed, and shortchanging it at offboarding is one of the more common (and expensive) mistakes we see.

Sick leave

Sick leave in Turkey works through the social security system, not employer-funded pay. Employees need a doctor's report (typically from a state hospital or contracted provider) to certify the absence. Once certified, social insurance (SGK) covers a portion of pay for the covered period, not the employer directly.

Employers don't front the cash here, but you're still on the hook for making sure the paperwork is submitted correctly and on time. Get this wrong and the employee's payment gets delayed, and that becomes your problem to manage even if it's not your money.

Parental leave

Here's the full picture on family leave:

Turkey doesn't have a shared parental leave scheme the way some EU countries do. Maternity and paternity leave are separate, fixed entitlements, not a pooled bank of days a couple can split however they want.

Public holidays for 2026

Turkey observes 14 public holidays a year. Seven have fixed calendar dates:

The rest of the 14 days come from two religious holidays, Ramadan Feast (Eid al-Fitr) and Sacrifice Feast (Eid al-Adha). These follow the lunar Islamic calendar and shift dates every year, so you'll want to check the official 2026 calendar closer to the date rather than plan around fixed dates. If someone works on a public holiday, they're generally entitled to extra pay on top of their regular wage.

Mandatory benefits

Three things are non-negotiable in Turkey: health insurance, pension contributions, and unemployment insurance. All three flow through the same social security system (SGK), funded by contributions from both sides:

There's no 13th-month salary requirement in Turkey, which surprises people coming from countries where it's standard. What you do have is that near-19% employer contribution layered on top of salary, every month, for every employee. Budget for it upfront rather than discovering it after your first payroll run.

Optional and competitive benefits

Legal minimums get you compliant, not competitive. Companies hiring in Turkey typically add:

• Private health insurance on top of state coverage, since public healthcare wait times push good candidates to want a private plan.
• Meal vouchers or a meal allowance, which is close to standard practice in Turkish white-collar jobs.
• Transportation allowances, especially in cities like Istanbul where commutes are long and expensive.
• Private pension contributions (BES) as a retention tool, since retirement age sits around 50.5 years and employees think about it earlier than in a lot of other markets.

If you're hiring for a competitive role, skipping these isn't really an option. Candidates comparing offers will notice the gap.

Common benefit mistakes

The two mistakes we see most often:

1. Treating unused vacation as forfeited instead of paying it out at termination. This is a common way to end up with a wage claim after someone leaves.
2. Assuming sick leave is an employer cost. It's not, but you still need to handle the SGK paperwork correctly or the employee's payment gets stuck in limbo, and they'll blame you.

Getting benefits administration wrong in Turkey doesn't always show up immediately. It shows up when someone leaves and files a claim, or when a labour inspector asks for records you don't have.

What this costs to manage yourself

Running this correctly in-house means someone on your team needs to track SGK filings, calculate accrued leave by tenure, manage religious holiday dates that shift every year, and stay current on contribution rates. That's a real job, not a spreadsheet side task, and most companies underestimate the ongoing attention it needs.

Hire with Columbus handles all of it, holiday calendars, leave accrual, SGK contributions, and payout calculations, for $179/month per employee. You get compliant payroll and benefits without hiring someone to become a Turkish labour law specialist first.

What are the compliance requirements?

Firing someone in Turkey means budgeting for notice pay plus severance, and getting either calculation wrong can turn a routine termination into a labor court case. The rules aren't complicated once you know them, but they're specific, and skipping a step usually costs more than doing it right the first time.

Employment contracts

Written contracts are the standard practice in Turkey and strongly recommended for every hire, even though some short-term arrangements can technically run on verbal terms. A written contract in Turkish protects you if a dispute ever reaches a labor court, since that's the language the court will work in.

At minimum, your contract should spell out job title, salary, working hours, start date, and probation terms. Skip these and you're relying on informal understanding, which almost never holds up when an employee challenges a dismissal.

Probation periods

Probation length is set by the employment contract and capped by statute. During probation, both employer and employee generally have more flexibility to end the relationship with less notice than a confirmed hire would require. Once probation ends, full termination protections apply, so build your evaluation timeline around that cutoff.

Working time regulations

The standard workweek in Turkey runs up to 45 hours. In practice, actual hours worked across the economy average closer to 43.2 hours per week, so most employers aren't running people right up to the legal ceiling.

Overtime rules apply beyond standard hours, and employers need to keep accurate time records to back up payroll and defend against wage disputes. If you can't produce hours records when an employee disputes their pay, you're the one at a disadvantage.

Notice periods

Turkish law ties statutory notice to length of service, with longer tenure earning longer notice. Across the workforce, the average notice period comes out to 6.7 weeks, though your exact obligation depends on the individual's contract and years with you.

Treat this as a benchmark, not a fixed number. The actual notice owed to a specific employee depends on their contract terms and tenure, and it's capped by statute regardless of what the contract says.

Termination process

Dismissals need a valid or just cause, documented in writing. There's no general government pre-approval requirement for private-sector terminations, but the employee can challenge the dismissal afterward, and a Turkish labor court will look closely at whether your cause and process hold up.

Turkey's employment protection index for regular contracts sits at 2.8 out of 6 on the OECD scale, which puts individual dismissals on the stricter side compared to many other markets. With union density at 10.9% and about 12.7% of the workforce covered by collective bargaining agreements, check whether a CBA applies to your hire, since it can add consultation steps beyond the statutory minimum.

Severance pay

Severance applies in situations like dismissal without just cause, retirement, and other statutory triggers, and it scales with tenure. Across the workforce, average severance works out to 23.1 weeks of pay.

Since Turkey's average effective retirement age sits around 50.5 years, don't assume severance only comes up in dismissals. Long-tenured employees hitting retirement age are a common trigger too.

Data protection

Turkey has its own personal data protection framework covering how you collect, store, and process employee information, including things like ID numbers, health data, and performance records. You need a lawful basis and, in many cases, documented consent to hold this data. Get your data handling wrong and you're looking at regulatory scrutiny and potential fines, on top of the reputational hit of a data complaint from your own employee.

Common compliance mistakes

• Invalid employment contract: missing mandatory terms can get the contract voided, exposing you to back pay and benefit claims
• Wrong termination process: skipping just-cause documentation means owing extra severance and notice pay, plus legal fees if it reaches court
• Missing mandatory clauses: an incomplete contract can be treated as invalid, triggering retroactive payments
• Improper dismissal: a successful challenge can mean compensation orders and, in some cases, a reinstatement ruling

Hire with Columbus handles the contract drafting, notice calculations, and severance math based on actual tenure, so you're not reverse-engineering Turkish labor law from a template. That's part of what's baked into the $179/month per employee, alongside compliant termination support if you ever need to let someone go.

What has changed recently?

Turkey's employment rules move fast, and 2026 has already brought a handful of updates that affect what you'll pay and how you plan headcount. Here's what's different if you last looked at Turkish hiring even a year ago.

Minimum wage jumped again in July 2026

The monthly minimum wage rose to TRY 33,030 as of July 1, 2026. Turkey typically adjusts this figure at least once a year to keep pace with inflation, which sat at 34.9% in 2025. If you're budgeting off last year's numbers, they're already out of date. Anyone paying entry-level roles near the floor needs to check this figure before finalizing offers, not after.

Tax and contribution rates reconfirmed for 2026

As of March 27, 2026, Turkey's core tax figures are locked in for the year:

The employer social security ceiling also updated to TRY 297,270 per month, covering unemployment, health and long-term care, and old-age/invalidity/survivors contributions. If you're running payroll for higher earners, this cap directly affects your actual contribution cost per employee, so it's worth re-checking rather than assuming last year's ceiling still applies.

Paternity leave entitlement updated

As of February 23, 2026, paternity leave stands at 1 week. It's a small number compared to the 16 weeks of maternity leave, but it's a real entitlement you need to build into leave policies and payroll planning for new fathers on your team.

What this means if you're hiring right now

None of these changes are dealbreakers, but they're the kind of detail that trips up companies running payroll manually or relying on outdated templates. An EOR like Hire with Columbus tracks these updates as part of the job, so your contracts, contributions, and leave policies stay current without you having to monitor Turkish regulatory bulletins yourself. That's less time spent chasing rate changes and more time actually hiring.